ABSTRACT
The increasing flexibility within the European states system in the late 1890s and the correspondingly diminished risk of a general war owed much to the development of the Eastern Question, which since the later 1880s had divided the powers into two embattled camps. If in the era of the Neue Kurs the division of the European powers into two broad groupings, with the conservative Triple Alliance supported by Great Britain enjoying a preponderance over the revisionist Franco-Russian partnership, had given a certain stability to the European states system, the shift in the mid-1890s to a more complex, tripartite grouping of the powers proved equally compatible with the maintenance of peace. In St Petersburg, for example, it led to a marked shift in Russian foreign policy priorities towards East Asia. Japans spectacular success was to have a profound impact on the relations between the powers in the European states system.
